


Like River Over Stone

by The Chronicler (AgentFrostbite)



Series: Being Open is Not a Weakness [2]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Body Positivity, Gen, Moira is a boss, Raven and Moira are friends, Raven is working toward being a BAMF, Raven needs a little support and Moira is more than happy to give it, Women Being Awesome, Women Supporting Women, kinda sorta, like they're getting there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:01:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27216856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentFrostbite/pseuds/The%20Chronicler
Summary: Raven knows she can fight, knows she can do better than she has done, she just doesn't know how to get there. Moira has a tip that'll help with more than just the fighting.(Pre "What Would I Do Without You?", based off the line about Moira being nice to Raven, cause I just had to write this)
Relationships: Moira MacTaggert & Raven | Mystique
Series: Being Open is Not a Weakness [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985278
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	Like River Over Stone

The one good thing about Oxford was that the men there didn't know what Raven really was. They only knew that she was an all-American blonde bombshell with a brilliant smile and the perfect figure. None of them ever advanced beyond flirting or buying her drinks – and she heavily suspected Charles's hand in that – unless she asked them out first. There were maybe three men she'd dated and one she'd really liked, but the majority of the interactions started and stopped at open-jaw stares.

Even at the CIA building, where the attention was absolutely worse, it was better. They knew she was a shapeshifter. Their stares were a little hungrier, a litter sharper, questioning in a way that none of the boys at Oxford ever were. She felt like a trophy on display, a rare and beautiful oddity that they wanted to win over, but at least she knew how to deal with that. She knew how to turn her nose up, to haughtily walk away, to only be sweet and dazzling if someone approached her and how to twist her words to leave them staring as she strode away. That was familiar, too.

In the mansion, in that place filled with memories both good and bad, Raven doesn't know how to look. When she was little, she and Charles would run around the empty rooms and hallways, and she always looked blue unless someone was around. When they were teens, when Kurt and Cain were around and even after they weren't, she looked normal. She never knew who she might run into, be they 'family' or police, and it wasn't worth the risk. She has no form to take there, because no matter what she looks like, she feels like an outsider, exposed in her own house.

There's no-one to see her wandering the hallways, and there's certainly no-one that cares, but she stays looking normal, because that's what feels less revealing.

Moira rounds the corner and Raven stops short. "There you are," she says. After Raven doesn't say anything – because she's mostly sure what she thinks of Moira, but she's also very much in her own head right now - Moira adds, "I heard you and Charles talking about you learning how to defend yourself earlier."

"Yeah," Raven confirms flatly.

Raven would very much like to learn how to shoot. Charles would very much like her _not_ to. Moira doesn't exactly answer to Charles, but she agreed with him when he was there, that Raven shouldn't be jumping into guns quite yet. Even after the mess at the facility, with Shaw and the teleporting mutant, Charles kept his foot down. They not-argued about it a couple hours ago, and come to think of it, that's probably why Raven's wandering around the way she is.

"Well," Moira continues, and her eyes gleam with almost mischief. "Charles said no guns. He never said no self-defense."

The walk through the hallways is quiet, but it's neither tense nor comfortable. Moira leads her to a plain training room, a new renovation of many of the empty rooms left behind after Sharon died and Charles and Raven moved to Oxford for Charles's genetics degree. They need it for training now, though Raven's only been in here a handful of times. It's small, has a few punching bags in a corner, but most of it is empty and the floor is made entirely of mats. One wall is nothing but a mirror, with a long bar attached to the base, at about waist height.

Moira kicks off her shoes and sheds her jacket. Moira's wearing pants that are neither tight nor flowy, and her t-shirt is tucked into them. She ties her hair back as she walks onto the mats and waits for Raven to come over. Raven shifts off her shoes – she's been lazy and hasn't actually bothered to change out of her PJs – and slims down her outfit to a pair of shorts and a tank top. She shifts her hair from long to short, so she doesn't need to worry about tying it back or anything, and the approaches. The mirrors reflect her own image back at her, but she hardly pays it any mind.

Moira's frowning slightly. She says nothing, though, and instead shows Raven a few stretches before they start sparring.

The idea of sparring is wonderful. To manipulate her body in a way that doesn't alter her appearance, to move with fluid, effortless grace, to feel as though she can do some amazing thing other than change everything about herself; it's an adrenaline rush in and of itself, but there's one tiny problem. Raven always seems to botch the moves, never able to react to her opponent in time to stop them from landing a hit on her. She tried it with Charles, and she can lie to herself and say that Charles was unintentionally reading her mind on what she wanted to do next. Sparring with Moira, she doesn't have that excuse, which means that her problem is internal.

"Hold," Moira orders, and Raven shifts out of her fighting stance, though the hostility doesn't melt away entirely.

Raven braces for the 'you're not getting this now, let's try this again later.'

"You're distracted-"

"I can do this," Raven asserts, not waiting for the rejection to fight.

"I know you can," Moira replies. "Your ability to do it isn't what's in question here; it's your focus."

"I am focused," Raven argues, even as she tries to plan out the argument. She's never heard this line before.

"Your focus is split," Moira clarifies, "between fighting me and looking like you."

What?

"Come here," Moira calls, jogging over to the mirror. Raven warily follows, and stays still when Moira places her hands on Raven's arms. "This isn't what you look like; it's what you're _thinking_ about looking like. You're putting so much of your focus into making sure you look normal that it's distracting you from blocking my punches quickly enough."

_"If you're using half your focus to look normal, then you're only half paying attention to whatever else you're doing,"_ Erik's words echo in Raven's head. _"Just pointing out something that could save your life."_

Raven bites her lip, then lets herself shift back into what she _truly_ looks like. Red hair, blue skin, a pair of old shorts and a well-worn t-shirt; she feels rather self-conscious about her clothing choice now.

Moira's smiling gently, though, meeting Raven's eyes in the mirror. "You look beautiful just like this," she says. "This is perfect."

"Not according to the rest of the world," Raven mutters angrily.

"Screw the rest of the world; they're mostly idiots anyway," Moira replies. "At the very least, 80% of the people in charge are."

"How do you do it?" Raven finds herself asking. "How do you deal with the stares?"

Because Moira gets them. She's a beautiful woman, too, working a job no woman does. She's surrounded by CIA agents, who stared at her as much as they stared at Raven.

"I let them just roll off me. If I don't choose to let them affect me, they don't," Moira answers simply. "It's hard to do sometimes, but I've saved myself a lot of grief and anger for it."

Well, if Moira, a perfectly ordinary human, can manage to survive and be comfortable in her own skin, then Raven, an extraordinary mutant, can do it, too.

"Ready to give it another try?" Moira asks.

Raven nods and they return to the center of the room. This time, it takes much, much longer for Moira to land any hits on Raven at all, and by the time it's done, Raven barely remembers that she's not faking her appearance.


End file.
